


The Hat

by TheShinySword



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Comedy, Established Relationship, F/F, Future Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:49:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28206378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShinySword/pseuds/TheShinySword
Summary: When Tomoe finds an old gift from Himari it leads her to remember their past and have hope for their new future together.
Relationships: Udagawa Tomoe/Uehara Himari
Comments: 10
Kudos: 50





	The Hat

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little holiday spirit filled fluff.

She’d meant to clean out the closet three years ago when Moca moved out and Tomoe and Himari regained their spare bedroom but at first the room felt too lonely without Moca in it to linger around and then Himari moved in the exercise equipment she swore she’d use but didn’t and Tomoe threw in her drum kit to gather dust beside it and then three years had passed and the whole room had become an in-home storage unit. That had been fine and good for years but every day they came closer and closer to actually needing the room and some odd forgotten instinct in Tomoe’s brain told her today was the day to clear the whole place out whether or not it was Christmas Eve.

It was easy when Tomoe really got into it. Most of the stuff was garbage: old magazine’s they’d bought for an article on a friend, knick knacks from weekend trips, the banner from the old shop she’d worked at. The bikes could be sold to friends, the old books hauled off to a store and the drums… well, Tomoe didn’t have the heart to sell the drums. Her undying optimism was certain Afterglow would have a real revival in their thirties as soon as Tomoe found the courage to bring it up to the others. The drums could just sit in the corner for now.

Then all that was left in the once bursting room was a little green lump in the corner of the closet, smothered in dust where it had long fallen off the shelf above and gotten forgotten behind a box. But Tomoe remembered it now, she picked it up and beat the dust bunnies on her knee so it could look just a little bit more like the hat it was.

At least the hat it was _meant_ to be. In practice it leaned a little more towards an abstract yarmulke. _A_ _lmost_ a proper beanie crocheted by clumsy young hands over a decade ago. It was an evergreen monstrosity: lumpy where it needn’t be, loose where it should have been tight, tight where it should have been loose and terribly, awfully unfashionable.

Tomoe loved it so much she wanted to cry.

Forgotten memories swirled up in her mind—or maybe that was just the dust settling back around her—and for a moment she was sixteen again.

_“It’s for you!” Himari shoved the nondescript brown paper bag into Tomoe’s hands, surprising her on one of their rare walks home alone._

_“_ _For Christmas?_ _”_ _Though Himari usually put more care into her wrapping_ _for Christmas presents, Tomoe thought as she opened the bag._

_Small hands clamped around Tomoe’s and shut the bag closed. “Don’t open it here,” Himari hissed, pigtails bouncing. “Later!”_

_Suspicious. Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to see me open it?” Himari always insisted on ceremony when she gave presents, an audience, proper ooos and awwws on opening, the works. She didn’t shove bags on people and ask them to open it later. Tomoe ignored the direction and tore open the sack._

_This only created more questions._

_“A tea cozy?”_ _Tomoe had no idea what a tea cozy was but it seemed like the best vague guess for the lump of yarn in her hands._

_Himari groaned, burying her face in Tomoe’s shoulder and sending heat up to Tomoe’s face. “It’s a hat.”_

_“Oh!_ _Yeah I see it.” Tomoe turned the lump over in her hands before stretching it out as best as she could and pulling it onto her head. It was both too tight and too loose and there wasn’t nearly enough length to reach her ears. Still, Tomoe couldn’t keep a broad grin from overtaking her face._

_Judging from the cringe on Himari’s face, Tomoe guessed it wasn’t flattering. “Lisa told me to start with a scarf… but you have so many of those! Urg!” She beat Tomoe’s arm with useless fists. “Give it back, I’ll throw it away.”_

_“No way!” She rose up on the tips of her toes to keep her head from Himari’s grasp. “You can’t take back a gift.”_

_“I can! I definitely can!”_

_But she couldn’t, not once she saw how happy the hat made Tomoe. She wore that thing for the whole winter, no matter how cold and exposed it left her ear_ _s, until the awkward edges started to fray and she retired it to a safe place with her most precious things. A gift Himari made just for Tomoe._

It still felt special all those years later, just like she did twelve years ago, Tomoe stretched the little hat in her hands and pulled it onto her head.

**Deedle dooo~**

Her alarm rang. Tomoe glanced at her phone and jumped to her feet—nothing quite ate up time like reminiscing. She had places to be and people to see, or at least a place and a person. She almost pulled the hat from her head before pausing and laughing. Nah, it’d be a fun surprise.

* * *

Himari waited for Tomoe by their old station stop. Old wasn’t really the right word to use for it—they still used it all the time anyway—but nostalgia covered Tomoe’s eyes. A little part of her expected to find a teenager with pigtails and rosy cheeks waiting against the entrance, the same part that thought she’d find a girl with long hair and drumsticks in her back pocket whenever she looked in the mirror.

But instead there was waiting a grown woman with hair in loose pink waves and the sort of subdued maturity she yearned for at age sixteen. But still beautiful. So darn beautiful.

“Himari!”

Himari looked up from her phone, eyes lighting up as they always did. “Tomoe—” The light turned into confusion. “What’s on your head?”

“Hmm?” Tomoe’s smile quirked up. Could it be that Himari forgot? Or maybe repressed it.  
“Is this… cosplay?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you a Christmas tree?”

Tomoe summoned up all the serenity she could muster. An angel couldn’t have been more serene that Christmas Eve. “It’s a gift from my first love.”

“Your first love?” For a moment confusion and then unjustifiable anger.Himari stomped, maturity given up for a classic Himari tantrum. “To! Mo! E! You have to tell me! Who is she?”  
“Pfft,” Laughter escaped from Tomoe’s clenched jaw, finally exploding out in laughter. “Bwahaaaaa. It’s you! You made me this hat.”

“I did not!’ Himari gasped and clutched her hands to her mouth. “Oh no.”

“You remember!”

With her hands clasped behind her back and an attempt at innocence on her face, Himari sidled up to her wife. “Hey Tomoe… let me see that hat.”

But twelve years in a relationship and twenty years glued at the hip were more than enough to clue Tomoe in on all of Himari’s tricks. “You want to throw it out don’t you?”

“We could burn it!”

“No! I love it!”

“Love it so much you haven’t worn it in years…”

Tomoe chuckled and offered her arm to Himari. She clutched Tomoe tight, her wedding ring gleaming in the winter afternoon against Tomoe’s shoulder. “It got a little lost. Found it in the spare bedroom.”

“Really? Must’ve been really far bac—did you clean it out?”

“Yup! Whole room!” Tomoe pounded her chest. “Didn’t take long at all.”

Himari nudged her with her hip as they walked down the street, “You’re not supposed to do anything like that! No lifting!”

“There wasn’t _much_ lifting.”

“NO lifting!” Himari dragged Tomoe down to her level, shaking her more than all the lifting she’d done throughout the day. “Get Ako to help!”

“Then I’d have to tell Ako why she’s helping.” Tomoe winked and snuck a kiss onto Himari’s cheek. “It’s normal babe. It’s called _nesting._ ”

Himari pouted, pretending not to be won over with a little show of affection. “Grrrr. You couldn’t wait _one_ night?”

They pause half a block away from their destination. Despite the scolding, a gentle smile unfolded on Tomoe’s face. “We’re really gonna tell them tonight?”

She takes Tomoe’s hands, lower lip between her teeth. “It’ll happen whether we tell them or not. Besides…” A hand slipped out of Tomoe’s and onto her stomach. “You’ll start showing soon.”

“I just kinda like it being our secret, ya know.

Happy tears welled up in Himari’s eyes. “What if we don’t tell them? What if we say you’re just really really loving the Yamabuki bakery lately!”

“You think we could?” Tomoe pulls back as her mind wanders into an easy fantasy.

“And in six months when we show up with a baby we’ll just say… um… we found her!”

“Yeah! We found her and we’re raising her as our own!”

“Like wolves!”

They burst into laughter, falling back together against the brick wall just a door down from Hazawa Coffee. With a light tug, Tomoe pulls Himari against her chest. “Probably won’t work huh?”

“Moca might believe it. At least she’ll pretend to.” Himari smiled. “But everyone else will figure it out when you don’t go nuts on the eggnog. And when you walk in with that hat on. This look has pregnancy brain written all over it.”

“I _like_ the hat,” Tomoe grumbled defensively.

“I made the hat, babe. I have the right to insult it.”

“If you want me to stop wearing it…” Tomoe grinned wolfishly, three months of pregnancy doing nothing to stop her from stealing a kiss from Himari. “Make me a new one.”

Himari sighed, cheeks red. “Okay …but you have to take it off first.”

“But then my head’ll be cold.”

“It’s cold now—” Himari stopped short, reeling back and grabbing her stomach where it had just pressed against Tomoe. “She kicked me!”

Tomoe blinked and looked down at her stomach—still as flat as ever despite the little growing zygote inside. “Babe… she doesn’t have feet yet.”

“Then she headbutted me!”

“Not sure she has that either, more of a… blob shape right now?”

Himari looked up at Tomoe with a very serious expression. “She wants you to take off that hat before our friends see it.”

“Ah ha…” Tomoe leaned away. “Maybe she just wants one too?”

“What is with you and that hat?!”

Tomoe looked up at the setting winter sun. “Twelve years ago you made me this hat and twelve years later we’re still together. I think that’s pretty special. I hope I find it again in twelve years from now too.”

Himari’s response was a loud, messy sniff. She dabbed her eyes on her sleeve, trying hard not to rub. “It’s just so ugly.”

“Heh, I think it’s cute.”  
She tugged on Tomoe’s hand, leading her down the block. “Fine Mrs. Udagawa, you win! You can keep the hat. But I’m still making you another one.”

Her heart swelled. “Will you make me another in twelve more years, Mrs. Udagawa?”

“And twelve years after that too. And after that. And after that!”

“I dunno we’ll be really old then…”

“I’ll keep doing it!” She declared with the mundane intensity Himari could muster so easily. “I’ll make you hats and our kids hats and our grandchildren hats! I’ll be a one woman hat factory! And when I die… when I die I’ll become a hat making ghost!”

“I can’t wait,” Tomoe whispered.

“To die?!”

“To grow old with you!”

“And then _die_. At least have our baby first.”

Tomoe laughed and shouted the name she’d loved for so long—the name she hoped she could always call—as they paused in front of their coffee shop home away from home. “Himari!”

“Tomoe!” She called back, glancing over her shoulder and squeezing their hands. “Ready?”

Tomoe pulled her hat snug, reached over Himari’s shoulder and pushed in the door. “Not even a little but let's do it anyway."

Together. 

**Author's Note:**

> Immensely inspired and named after The Hat by Ingrid Michaelson, which is my favorite "this is not a Christmas song but it feels like a Christmas song" song


End file.
